Cru Jones Society

Come one, come all to the CJS Circus of Friday Fun! In today’s edition, we’ve got the amazing MLB batting stance impersonator! In the ring to our right we’ve got all the people bringing the beautiful world of baseball from the steroid freaks on the field to the indestructible man selling peanuts in the stands to the beautiful sideline reporter bringing you all the news outside the broadcast booth! In the ring to our left is the incredible screwing seal, a kid who brilliantly plays Johnny Cash, and the WEEECKID Clowns themselves! Stick around because later we’ve got college kids in their underwear, DJ heroes, and the ultimate heavyweight fighter who can’t be beat, but is unable to recognize a good deal when he sees it! Step right up, join the CJS Circus of Friday Fun, and let’s get to this week’s links! Continue Reading »

As I sit here listening to Reel Big Fish sing about beer and ponder which liquor currently in my collection will go best with my orange juice, I can’t help but to think about the way drinking has changed as I have aged. Sure some things are obvious like hangovers. And apparently some things never change, like mixing hard alcohol with orange juice on a weeknight. Actually I settled for an orange juice neat since I have nothing that would be good with the juice. I don’t know if that is a fail or a win. I suppose that’s a change, in the past that would have easily been a fail. Continue Reading »

Every Wednesday between now and the end of baseball season the Cru Jones Society brings you a new baseball movie examined for both overall entertainment value and treatment of our favorite game. To suggest a film, email us at staff [at] crujonessociety.com. Otherwise, pour yourself an $8 beer, crack some shells, and let’s play ball.

Date Released: April 8, 2005
Box Office Total: $42,071,069
Team Featured: Boston Red Sox

“You know what’s really great about baseball? You can’t fake it. You know anything else in life you don’t have to be great in – business, music, art – I mean you can get lucky. Yeah, you can fool everyone for awhile, you know? It’s like – not – not baseball. You can either hit a curveball or you can’t. That’s the way it works…You know?  You can have a lucky day, sure, but you can’t have a lucky career. It’s a little like math. It’s orderly. Win or lose, it’s fair. It all adds up. It’s, like, not as confusing or as ambiguous as, uh…”

“Life?”

“Yeah. It’s – it’s safe.”  -Ben Wrightman

Ben has only ever loved the Red Sox. That is until he met Lindsey. Now he is put to a test to find out if he has love as big as the Green Monster, enough for both the Red Sox and Lindsey. Continue Reading »

Having a Master’s Degree in communication is both a blessing and a curse.

On one hand, I believe communication (more specifically language) is all we have to differentiate ourselves from animals. It is the paramount quality standing head and shoulders above all others in what makes a human a human, which renders its study the most vital prism through which we understand our world. And on a practical level, having a sophisticated understanding of communication makes you better at getting jobs, maintaining relationships, and seeing through bullshit. It’s philosophically interesting and utilitarian, therefore rare in terms of its dual usefulness.

On the other, you study so many different aspects of communication, otherwise immediately pointless bullshit seeps into your consciousness years after the fact rendering your ability to focus on imminently important things (i.e. buying a house, planning a wedding, doing the job you’re actually paid to do) goes completely out the window. This is one of those times for E Dagger. Continue Reading »

This week’s question, If you could be any historical tyrant, who would you be, has roots a little different than our other questions. Normally we have a brainstorming session to choose our Confessional questions, but not this one. We will let Senor Limon explain how this question came about.

“We have a long and storied history with this question, since Hart, Dagger and I came up with it while drunkenly hitting on random women in a random Tucson bar during the first ever CJS annual rendezvous. Well, Hart and I were drunkenly hitting women. As I recall, we were laughing off a particularly hilarious rejection as two girls brushed me off for not being familiar with whatever obscure Russian author she was currently reading as a part of her graduate studies in Russian literature.  On a side note, higher education is a great thing, but forgetting that you have chosen to specialize in a tiny subset of human knowledge and convincing yourself that what you’re studying is the only important thing in the world is simply unforgivable. Anyway, the conversation somehow devolved into an argument over the artistic styling of one of the random ass paintings on the wall at the bar. As my question of what literary character would you be was brushed off by the Russian lit grade student as trite, we came up with the historical tyrant question as one of the most awkward and guaranteed hilariously unsuccessful pickup lines ever.”

So when we started the Monday Confessional feature, we couldn’t help but to constantly bring this question up, and so finally we posed it to all of our loyal readers. So which historical tyrant would you be? We’ll go first. Continue Reading »

Welcome to Friday, CJS regulars. You’ve either worked hard for four days and earned a nice Friday of slacking off with a bunch of goofy Internet links, or you’ve phoned it in Monday through Thursday, so what’s another day of wasting your company’s time and money?

And speaking of money, while the country sits in the grips of its worst recession in decades, that doesn’t mean we can’t have a good time. We’ve even got a link outlining why the world is better because of our monetary woes. Also look out for enjoy links about Michael Ian Black, George Jones, Alex Trebek, dead/not dead MMA star Kimo Leopoldo, Mark McGrath, and a ton more. You’re but a click away. Continue Reading »

When we last off, we had just gone to two of Denver’s premiere punk rock venues. But there are still two more I frequented over the past 12 or 13 years. We have had a long enough intermission, so without further ado here are the other two venues where I learned what life was about.

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Every Wednesday between now and the end of baseball season the Cru Jones Society brings you a new baseball movie examined for both overall entertainment value and treatment of our favorite game. To suggest a film, email us at staff [at] crujonessociety.com. Otherwise, pour yourself an $8 beer, crack some shells, and let’s play ball.

Date Released: May 11, 1984
Box Office Total: $47,951,979
Team Featured: New York Knights

“You’ve got a gift, Roy… but it’s not enough – you’ve got to develop yourself. If you rely too much on your own gift… then… you’ll fail.” – Ed Hobbs. 

Roy Hobbs is a man of extraordinary baseball gifts and a bat he carved himself from a lightning-struck tree on his farm. This story chronicles Roy’s promising start, his missing years, his re-emergence, and the women he loves along the way. This is widely regarded as one of the best sports movies of all-time. Does it get the CJS stamp of approval? Read on and find out… Continue Reading »

Last month CJS dedicated its Monday Confessional to “guilty pleasures.” In general, we find the concept of a guilty pleasure to be patently ridiculous, and said as much in the preamble to each question. No one should have to feel guilty about something they genuinely derive enjoyment from when it comes to music, movies, booze, or innocent homosexual crushes.

In 2004, Chuck Klosterman wrote a terrific essay deconstructing Entertainment Weekly’s Encyclopedia of Guilty Pleasures. In it, he asserts:

“What the authors of The Encyclopedia of Guilty Pleasures (and everyone else who uses this term) fail to realize is that the only people who believe in some kind of universal taste-a consensual demarcation between what’s artistically good and what’s artistically bad-are insecure, uncreative elitists who need to use somebody else’s art to validate their own limited worldview. It never matters what you like; what matters is why you like it.”

We absolutely agree, but this isn’t to say that guilty pleasures are non-existent. Continue Reading »

Good morning true believers! Welcome to another wonderful week at Cru Jones Society. As we have been doing for the past several months, we start the week with Monday Confessional. This week we had a super and powerful question for you. In fact it was a question about super powers. With so many options, and because we are comic book nerds and have considered this question since we first saw Superman leap a tall building in a single bound, we wanted to know what super power you would have? We got so many responses and if we all some how get these powers, we will be ready to start our own Avengers (or Super Friends if DC is more your speed. Or X-Men, since we nerded it up and don’t want to exclude our casual fans). Now read on and let us stop monologuing. Continue Reading »

CJS is in a fightin’ mood. We’ve been pent up all week, so it’s time to release that aggression. All over your face. Via internet. With words.

Head on in to Happy Friday for links about fallout from UFC 100, top earning comedians, global warming, beer from the motherland, and a whole host of controversial goodness. Don’t make us put our dukes up, ‘cuz we’ll do it. We ain’t afraid of you! Continue Reading »

I have been going to punk rock shows for 12 or 13 years now, who can really keep track, also I can’t count. This thought struck me as I was watching Unwritten Law play the Bluebird Theater the other night. Aside from the few shows I have seen at Red Rocks, and the countless Warped Tours, I have seen the bulk of my shows at four different venues in the Denver area. They are all more or less the same, but for some reason there are still ones I like better than others.

I thought I would take a stroll down memory lane (and Colfax) and revisit each venue as well as the best and worst shows I have seen at each. The sound check is done, the lights are dimming, and it is time to rock this bitch. Continue Reading »

Every Wednesday between now and the end of baseball season the Cru Jones Society brings you a new baseball movie examined for both overall entertainment value and treatment of our favorite game. To suggest a film, email us at staff [at] crujonessociety.com. Otherwise, pour yourself an $8 beer, crack some shells, and let’s play ball.

Date Released: September 14, 2001
Box Office Total: $40,222,729
Team Featured: Kekambas

“That Keanu Reeves movie was when he has to coach the little league inner city suck-squad, I think it was called Mighty Ducks 5: It’s about Baseball This Time or something like that.” – CJS Regular Deuce.

In our fantasy draft of baseball movies to review for our Summer Homestand, I ended up with the too many sub plots, tug at your heart strings, Keanu Reeves coaching kids playing baseball movie Hardball. Why we even put this on the list, I will never know. Continue Reading »

As a workaday slave reporting to my 18^th floor office gulag everyday, I get all the privileges and headaches associated with urban employment. There’s a ton of cool places to eat, but nowhere to park. I walk past a large cast of colorful characters each morning on my way to the office, but most of them ask me for money. There’s a free shuttle taking you right through the heart of one of downtown’s main arteries housing abundant shopping, assorted and tasty restaurants, and plenty of otherwise cool shit to do, but you have to share the bus with the weirdest collection of freaky and confusing yardbirds this side of a gay pride parade in the deep South.

And that’s what we’re here to discuss today. Continue Reading »

Whether you stepping into the octagon, coming up to bat, or meeting a date you’ll want to make a good first impression. The best way we can think of to accomplish such a feat is with a kick ass entrance, and all kick ass entrances are accompanied by a kick ass song. So we wanted to know what song you would use when entering the arena for a fight, or the batter’s box, or the quasi fancy restaurant you’re meeting your date at.

And we got some great responses; responses that would be great for situation where you would make an entrance; responses that trump, or at least are on par with, Darth Vader’s dark and ominous tune. As usual, aside from last week, Dagger and Hart are first, then Daniel Larusso, and finally our reader’s submissions.

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It’s another Friday and we have an Irish weekend ahead of us. By that we don’t mean we’ll be attending the Irish Festival, but that our weekend will be filled with drinkin’, fightin’, and potatoes! Potatoes not guaranteed, but very likely, after all they are potatoes. But before all that we have a glut of links and they’re not going to look at themselves. So get to clickin’ and enjoy another Happy Friday! Continue Reading »

When we were in college, Senor Limon ordered Pride: Final Conflict 2003 on pay-per-view featuring Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, Chuck Liddell, and Wanderlei Silva, and had planned on inviting his fellow jiu-jitsu dorks over to watch it with him. Unfortunately for him, none of those assholes showed up leaving poor Limon to watch this $50 MMA event with only yours truly, who at the time knew next to nothing about mixed martial arts.

Little did he or I know that this event would spark my interest in UFC-style fighting leading to me paying a cover charge at Dave & Buster’s to watch the Rampage/Liddell rematch, ordering multiple fights on pay-per-view with my own money, and checking Yahoo sports everyday for a new Kevin Iole or Dave Meltzer column. Of which, Kevin Iole’s latest one is a dandy.

Which brings us to right now. Limon wrote an article here on CJS last year called “Why I Love MMA.” We often link to MMA articles in Happy Friday. And just this Monday we asked you in honor of UFC 100 to send us what your fight entrance music would be (send them to staff@crujonessociety.com). C’mon, you know you’ve thought about this… The point is CJS loves itself some good old fashioned fighting. Continue Reading »

Every Wednesday between now and the end of baseball season the Cru Jones Society brings you a new baseball movie examined for both overall entertainment value and treatment of our favorite game. To suggest a film, email us at staff [at] crujonessociety.com. Otherwise, pour yourself an $8 beer, crack some shells, and let’s play ball.

Date Released: April 21, 1989
Box Office Total: $64,431,625
Team Featured: 1919 Chicago Black Sox

“You know we just don’t recognize the most significant moments of our lives while they’re happening. Back then I thought, well, there’ll be other days. I didn’t realize that that was the only day.” – Dr. Archibald “Moonlight” Graham.

Most people don’t get “other days” in their lives. Field of Dreams is a fantasy story about a whole collection of people who get their other days and one more chance to live their dreams, right their wrongs, and experience the nirvana of second chances. All told through the prism of baseball. Continue Reading »

I just renewed my lease; they raised my rent, God Dammit! But this is the first timeI  have ever renewed a lease. I spent the last few years changing homes like a hermit crab as I had roommates who were using a college education to move on with their lives, which meant I had to find somewhere else to live. But I have spent the last year living alone for the first time ever. Here are a few of the reasons why I have loved living alone. Continue Reading »

Hope everyone had a happy Independence Day. CJS spent the weekend the traditional American way by drinking beer out plastic Solo cups, out of bottles, out of cans, and out of a hollowed out plastic yard flamingo. When we were devising Confessional topics, the original question for this week was something to the effect of “How do you spend your 4^th?” When we realized everyone would respond with some sort of combination of barbecuing, drinking, and watching things blow up in the sky, we changed it up.

So last week we asked: “What is something you love about America?” hoping we’d get a diverse snapshot of patriotic pride. While we didn’t get what we hoped for, we received a couple. Check those out inside, and be sure to stay tuned for next week’s question. But for now, in the words of the World Police – “America, Fuck Yeah!” Continue Reading »